2015/12/06

Looking closely at the official figures of airstrikes in Syria or Iraq, we can say that by December 16, 2015 Russia military forces will have conducted more airstrikes in Syria since 09/30/2015 than the whole international coalition led by U.S. (including Australia, Belgium, Denmark, The Netherlands, UK, Bahrain, Canada, France, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and UAE) will have conducted in Syria and Iraq since 09/22/2014 - starting more than a year before Russia.

US-led coalition military forces conducted less than 7 airstrikes per day in Syria since 09/22/2014, on average.

Russia is conducting on average more than 111 airstrikes per day in Syria. From 09/30/2015 to 12/4/2015 Russian military forces have conducted 3,561 sorties and destroyed 7,334 targets.

From 09/30/2015 to 12/25/2015 Russian aviation has conducted 5,240 sorties in Syria, including 145 sorties by long-range aviation. More than 10,610 targets were destroyed.

- Report on January 15: Since September 30, the Russian Aerospace Forces in Syria have made 5,662 sorties, including 145 sorties made by strategic missile and long-range bomber aviation. The Russian military have also carried out 97 launches of sea-based and air-based missiles.

On January 15-18 Russia’s warplanes have made 157 sorties destroying 579 terrorist targets.

On January 25-31 Russian aviation made almost 470 sorties and attacked more than 1,350 targets.

[Karl Rowe] said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." [12]

"[There exists in this country] a shadowy Government with its own Air Force, its own Navy, its own fundraising mechanism, and the ability to pursue its own ideas of the national interest, free from all checks and balances, and free from the law itself." [22b]